Airport Lounges, Private Jets and Rich Millennials

Some people say this country has never been more polarized.

We can’t agree on anything anymore. Everything is a partisan issue.

Maybe that’s true but the one thing that can bring us all together is our new national pastime — complaining. We love to complain about pretty much everything.

Travel is something everyone loves to complain about.

I love Italy but it’s just soooo overcrowded now in the summer!

I’ve heard this complaint in various forms for the past 3-4 years. Tough life.

Here’s a story from The New York Times on something a lot of travelers have been complaining about in recent years:

Here’s the explanation:

There have never been more airport lounges. Yet there also have never seemed to be more lounges that are not worth the hassle. Many are forlorn. Many others are overcrowded; sometimes the lines for the lounges are the longest in the airport. Yet we all still fight to get in. Many of us will choose to fork over too much in credit card fees or commit to flying on one airline to gain entry to these spaces, because we still believe they offer a taste of luxury amid the stress of travel.

Credit card companies need to offer perks to entice people to pay the ridiculous annual fees they charge. One perk many now offer is access to airport lounges.

So these lounges are now packed all the time. I flew last month and there was a line wrapping around the terminal just to get into the Delta lounge.¹ It seems like there’s a Yogi Berra quote that’s useful here somewhere.

If airport lounges are no longer available only to the elite class, private jets definitely are. It’s estimated that regular private jet usage is reserved for the top 0.1% or so of the population in America.

The Wall Street Journal has a new piece out about how flying private is the new marker of extreme wealth in this country:

Just consider how luxurious this must feel:

It isn’t just avoiding the security line, or the hoi polloi. Flying private means trading Biscoff cookies for freshly baked ones and picking lunch of shrimp cocktail or filet mignon from menus spanning a dozen pages. Chef Nobu Matsuhisa crafted a menu for VistaJet that includes miso salmon. Some cabin hosts are trained to give travelers facials 40,000 feet above the ground–with Dr. Barbara Sturm’s line of luxury skin care.

Surely, private jet travelers have nothing to complain about.

They don’t have to worry about crowded Amex lounges. No long lines to wait in. No Starbucks queues to worry about. No people sleeping on the floor or getting drunk at 7 in the morning. No one talking excessively loud on their speaker phone next to you at the gate.

Must be nice.

Well even the private jets are experiencing more volume:

Kevin Hooks, 63, a Flexjet client and veteran flier, said he spends around $800,000 annually mostly crisscrossing the Southwest in a Praetor 600 midsize business jet that seats 9. He has noticed plane hangars around the country growing more crowded because of increased demand since the pandemic.

It helps that the ranks of the ultrawealthy continues to grow:

Talk about bull market topics.

Here’s another story from The Wall Street Journal that would have seemed impossible in the aftermath of the Great Recession:

Millennials were way behind coming out of the 2008 crash but look at us now:

Paul Rudd has this one:

And that data is from 2022 so millennials are in an even better place now considering stocks, housing prices and incomes are all up since then.

For some the scars still run deep from the financial crisis. This is from the WSJ story:

Millennials are entering midlife wealthier than they or anyone else expected. Many of them fear it won’t last.

Mike Tonkinson finished law school near the end of the 2007-09 recession and spent several anxious months without a paycheck after his new job’s start date was pushed back. The unemployment and foreclosures he saw in those years have haunted him since.

“You only have to watch ‘The Big Short’ once and go, ‘Oh, my God,’ ” said Tonkinson, referring to the movie about the era’s financial crisis. “It just makes you jumpy.”

The 45-year-old lawyer in Boulder, Colo., today is a homeowner with ample retirement savings but worries his wealth could suddenly disappear. He keeps an emergency fund that could cover his expenses for years.

Thanks a lot Michael Lewis.

I actually look at all of these complaints as a sign of progress in this country. We’re the richest nation this world has ever seen and we still find things to complain about.

Don’t get me wrong. There are still plenty of problems in the world and there always will be. Things will never be perfect. This mindset isn’t for everyone.

But rich people complaining about the problems that come from there being too many rich people is something that will never get old for me.

That’s how you know you’re in a bull market. You have to enjoy these things while they last because at some point the music will stop.

Just not yet…

Michael and I talked about complaints, millennial wealth, travel and more on this week’s Animal Spirits video:



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Further Reading:
Millionaires & Delusions

Now here’s what I’ve been reading lately:

Books:

¹I have all of the requisite credit cards but have still never set foot inside an airport lounge in my life. Maybe it’s because where I live we have a regional airport that doesn’t have one. I’m such a flyover state guy that I’ll never know what it’s like to be an elitist.